The Book of the Ler

by M. A. Foster

  Finally she said, “I don’t know any more. I learned no more from Hath’ingar, if that is indeed his real name. He sneered at mine, so I think the name he gave us is false. But for now we have failed. And if it is at all possible, we must get off this planet; people know you and I live. He will come back, he said so, and he will hunt us to the ends of the universe.” It was the first time Han had seen her admit defeat, or fear.

  She lifted the bedcovers gingerly and looked down at her bare body. She was scrubbed clean, and the scratches and scrapes she had come to know so well had been started on the way to being healed. Some were already disappearing, although she would bear some of those fine scars to the end of her days.

  “You did this? You?”

  “Yes. You had a much harder time of it than I did. And you needed care. Better by me, strange as I am to you, than with strangers, or so I thought you might think. There is much I don’t understand about the way your people think, but I know much more now than I did when I saw you last.” He spoke now in her language, and then, halting and stumbling over the odd and cabalistic way the four meanings lay within the single roots, he told her his story, all he had done and learned at Ghazh’in. At last, he finished.

  “You have seen much, learned much, penetrated far into us, here. That, at least, is not for nothing. And though your accent is barbarous, worse than Hath’ingar’s when his mask was off, it sounds sweet to my ear.” She reached to him and embraced him, holding him tightly to her for a long time. Han felt embarrassed, confused by this sudden display of emotion, so uncharacteristic of her. She had apparently become completely unhinged during her long walk.

  She sensed his thoughts. “I was alone, absolutely alone. I have never been alone in my life before. I saw visions sometimes, I could not tell if I were remembering or seeing something new. Old lovers, friends. You. I was confused. And so I finally find you, here, and you are not the proper human any more, but you speak to me in Singlespeech, poor kenjureith, and heal me as would the most intimate body friend. Only one more event between us and I will have to tell you my body-name, something I have never told anyone outside my braid.”

  He let her run out of steam, and she gradually fell into a pensive silence once again. Han got up from his place beside her where he had been sitting, and after a quick rummaging through an ancient and much-used wardrobe, produced a new overrobe he had bought for her, which was embroidered with designs in vines and flowers according to the bucolic tastes of the region.

  “I know it’s not your style, Liszendir, but I thought something like this might attract less attention, as we traveled. People would probably take you for a native. As if a pair like us could not but attract attention, even if we were dressed in grain sacks.

  She threw her head back and laughed aloud. Then she shut it off, abruptly. She was herself again, certain, brash. “So now what of us?”

  “I’m not sure at all. I do know there is little likelihood we will get off Chalcedon in the near future, possibly in the conceivable future. The Pallenber was the first ship since Efrem’s, and his was the first in ten years. Chalcedon is very far off the normal lanes. And if the Warriors don’t come back, we can count on being stuck here. Until you are fertile.”

  “Like that?”

  “Yes. I had thought to head for the hill of the two pinnacles, where we were to meet. We could try to get some money and wait for the first ship. But we could not go to the Capital for any period of time . . .”

  “No. ‘One rat, another,’ goes the proverb. And so it is. We can’t wait for a ship in the Capital. But why not the hills. There is no better way, at least until we feel the pressure of time on me.”

  “And if nothing comes, Liszendir?” He did not finish. He knew very well what would happen. They would have to go their own ways, the ways of their people; and something undefined was taking shape between them.

  “I know.” It was all she said.

  5

  “Events follow definite trends each according to its nature. Things are distinguished from one another in definite classes. In this way change and transformation become manifest.”

  —Hsi Tz’u Chuan, I Ching, Introduction.

  HAN AND LISZENDIR stayed in the inn at Hobb’s Bazaar for only a few more days, until she had begun to recover her strength, at least enough to travel. During the long walk, her wrists had started healing, but they had not been reset properly, and so, although they were regaining their function again, especially with the enforced rest Han was insisting on, she would bear the mark of their disalignment the rest of her life. Liszendir offered no more intimacies, and Han cautiously avoided any situations likely to produce them.

  When she announced she was ready, together they took the money Han had made and bought up a store of provisions and a pack beast, a drif, similar to the ones of the team which had pulled the wagon to Hobb’s Bazaar. This one was slightly smaller, however, and it definitely possessed a livelier personality than either of those in the team.

  Neither Liszendir nor Han were particularly knowledgeable with animals; but with much trying, they eventually got it to behave more or less as they wanted, all to the general entertainment of the stablemaster and his louts and hangers-on. After the initial trying session, they led it through the streets with a light bit and halter. Liszendir favored the drif with an evil leer, then turned to Han in resigned disgust.

  “One thing is certain: if all else fails, we can at least eat the intractable beast!” At the tone of her remarks, which he sensed was not completely to his advantage, the drif raised a ragged eyebrow, lowered an ear, and thereupon seemed to behave with slightly more decorum. Liszendir was unimpressed; she continued to glare at it from time to time. She was still hungry. Han grimaced and added, for emphasis, a few remarks of his own.

  “And on the hoof might even be more effective. Then it can serve both ways!” He also leered at it meaningfully. “If we can find any meat at all under this fluff.” He poked experimentally in the general area of the ribs. The creature was covered with a fine rich pelt of light tan-brown color.

  Despite Han’s suspicions, however, the drif did have meat under the soft fur, and for all its seeming fragility, would carry a huge load without complaint. In fact, it misbehaved only when it had no load.

  Thus they set out for the hills to the southeast, where they had originally intended to meet. Curiously, Liszendir was reluctant, when it came to it, to leave Hobb’s Bazaar; but she admitted readily the wisdom of it. The two of them together attracted too much attention, too much curiosity. It was true that ler and human both lived in peace on Chalcedon; but they did not yet cohabit. Han and Liszendir were not intimate, but they had been together, and he noted that a new side of her personality had appeared since they had gotten back together, after she had wandered, dazed, into the market. She was more relaxed, less peremptory, less standoffish. Sometimes she could be as charming as a child, innocently affectionate, and full of unexpected turns of thought and word. She was not the only one changing; he was noticing changes in himself as well.

  Along the empty road to the south and east, they passed few travelers. An occasional wagon, a herd of drif being driven by country louts who gaped in astonishment at them, and at anything else which happened to pass. As they walked, Han outlined his plan.

  “We cannot live in the Capital. We both agree there is a high probability of spies. Yet we must live somewhere within reach until a ship comes in. We could farm, I suppose, but I know neither you nor I are knowledgeable. I have thought that if we can find a deposit in the hills, we could pan for gold or other stuff. It has no great value here, but it could support us—we could make short trips to the edge of the city for food supplies.”

  “And what if no ship ever comes?” she asked, looking intently at Han.

  He did not answer her for a long time, even though he knew the answer well enough. Finally he spoke.

  “If all else fails, then I suppose you will have to weave here, within a few years.” Th
ey did not speak again for some time.

  At last the ground began to rise above the gentle ups and downs of the Chalcedon landscape. After that, which had taken many days of travel to reach, it was not long before they sighted the two pinnacles they were looking for. The last time they had seen them, it had been from the city; that now seemed years ago; time was distorted on this world of long days and no seasons. Long ago, Han had disposed of his chronometer, which was set to standard time. The one with a variable rate setting for spacefarers who might land on many different worlds was far behind, somewhere with the Pallenber, wherever it was.

  They turned off the road and climbed the hill towards the outcrops, looking for a suitable site. To their surprise, they found soon a small abandoned cabin, human in style, but sturdy and comfortable. Nearby was a shallow stream of clear sweet water tumbling over a sandy bed in which gleamed specks of gold. Nearby were remains of industry—rotted chutes and spillways, pans and shovels; the owner was long gone.

  Han speculated that the owner had been one of the original settlers, a fellow who had come up to the pinnacles alone to pan for gold. He had hit upon a rich field. But gold was common on the planet, and so had no real value anywhere except at the port, and even then only when ships came in. So what would, anywhere else, have been instant riches, became only a source of isolation. And eventually, perhaps many years later, he became sick, and with no one near, died. Liszendir agreed with the scenario, but added another thought.

  “I do not worry he will return. These tools, structures, and so forth show evidence of long time upon them. He left or died long ago. It only underlines how little we know—that we do not know how long Chalcedon has been settled. I have been guilty of making the assumption that it was only in the last few years, but it appears roots here go deeper than we thought.”

  “Yes. And as you see that, I see that it may have been long enough for the ler settlers at the isolated village of Ghazh’in to abandon Common as a working language. That would mean that they did not teach it to the children, not that they forgot, because I know your memories work differently from ours. They would not forget, but they might not pass it on.”

  “You open doors of speculations into which I do not care to look, less walk through.”

  “But I do not, having the disregard for personal welfare which characterizes us ancestral primates. No, I am not aiming that at you. But consider: Chalcedon has been kept a secret. And we were sent out here, untold, as if it was just next door. I know technology shrinks distances, but this is too far. Now: Hetrus was chief, for the humans, at that meeting. Who was boss for the ler? Not you, you are an adolescent, you have no standing or status to speak for society until you have been woven and given birth. Not Yalvarkoy or Lenkurian Haoren, either, although they may have known. That other one we can discount as a spy from somewhere else, who wanted us killed. So who is left? Defterdhar Srith the elder. Who is she and what does she know?”

  “Defterdhar Srith is very old and wise, but more than that I know little of her. She is not of the braid of those who assume responsibility for Kenten. She has a reputation of being one who will ultimately be called among the wise. Some call her diskenosi mnathman—the fifteenth sage. There are only fourteen.”

  “But as you suggest, we can open the door, but we cannot go into it very far.”

  “No. Possibilities, possibilities.”

  They spent the next few days in making the little cabin habitable. The cleaning was easy. Repair they managed by cannibalizing superfluous parts of the cabin and the sheds attached to it. For recreation, they made little side trips, exploring the area around the cabin. It was during one of these explorations that Liszendir found a skeleton, far up the stream, near its source, which was a tiny spring trickling water out of a cleft in the rock. She examined the bones carefully, and pronounced the skeleton a human one, from the structure of the hands and jaw. Ler did not have wisdom teeth. Han was not superstitious, but he felt uncomfortable in the presence of this reminder of mortality. But to the contrary, Liszendir called it a good omen, and immediately became noticeably more animated and personable. Han was mystified at her behavior.

  She said, “No, no, this is not bad! This is a good sign, a good omen. I have been looking for something to lend depth to this place. Tone. This is very good! I will explain.”

  He agreed to listen, suspecting that he was in for another long explanation. Han was beginning to suspect that the reason why ler society was so static was that all their energy went into producing the next generation and keeping it stable for the future.

  She continued, “You know about us now, that when you have woven, had your children, and raised them, you are free and often go off on your own. Many become solitaries. So the person, alone, feels this end near—then he goes out, alone, doing what we call tsanziraf, cure-seeking. Sometimes it heals and you know you were wrong—it was not yet time. Other times it brings the end. At any rate, it solves the problem. There is much wild land on ler worlds, and tsanziraf must be in the wild. So when you terminate on one, you lie where you fall. We do not dispose of the dead—they dispose of themselves. Perhaps I should not tell you so much—this is high religion. But it is so; just so. The body returns to the earth. To find skeletons in the wild is a good omen because it means that someone was there, fulfilled.”

  “But that’s a human skeleton, not ler. For all we know he wasn’t at peace, or even satisfied; hell, he was probably scared half out of his wits.”

  She dismissed his objections with an airy wave. “No matter, no matter. So it was human, the prospector? Think—such a one would have to be at some peace with himself to travel space and then walk out here all alone. I know gold lures, but it does not change nature, however much we might wish it so. Could you do this? You will say no and give me a thousand rationalizations; you are young, you wish company, mates, lovers, make a living after the lights of your own kind. I know because I feel exactly the same way. I would not come out here. I cannot live alone.” For a moment she stopped, and became pensive, abstracted. Then she continued again. “Even now, I should be making the first tentative steps toward seeking insiblings. And at fertility, weave and bear children. But him, now. So he was probably greedy. So he was disappointed. But if he stayed, I know he would have eventually seen within—humans can do it too, the only difference between us there is that you have to want it more than we do. Otherwise he would not have stayed, and ended his days in the city yonder, hiding from himself with other old people.”

  But they had to admit that, omen or not, the place possessed a wild beauty all its own. The cabin was situated about two-thirds of the way, up a rocky defile which ran parallel with the line of the ridge. At the top were the two pinnacles which could be seen on the horizon from the Capital. There were trees all around, in some places becoming thickets, and the stream wound through the defile, saying the things streams felt important to say—comments about humus and rock, rain and long days of sun and shadow. The sunlights played among the heights, and down in the plains below, cloud shadows prowled over the land in the slow and measured way of Chalcedon weather. In the defile, there was a breeze most of the time. And from the pinnacles, the view was uncommonly magnificent for a planet with such generally low relief. True, it was a lonely, isolated place, but it was quiet, conducive to thought, and the morning light slanting into it from the east was lovely.

  After a few days of living and working together, things slowed down to the point where they realized that they had now a certain problem between them: they were now too close to each other, both in physical proximity, due to the close confines of the cabin and their common fate since arriving on Chalcedon, and in a certain emotional sense, which both of them felt apprehension about exploring. One night, after supper, the day they had finished arranging the cabin to suit them, they fell into a discussion about this.

  Han started it by admitting that he found their closeness more disturbing now than when they had been together on the ship. She on
ly laughed, teasing and provoking him.

  “How so? In Ghazh’in you lived for months with ler, fertile ler. But they neither molested you nor buggered you in your sleep!”

  “You know it’s not the same with us.”

  “Ah, now. That I know. All too well.” After that, she lapsed into a serious, brooding silence. But he wanted her to talk, and seriously. Something had been bothering her since he had known her, something about ler which she could not or would not express. So he tried to steer her to more openness by asking about herself, her people. He had learned much at Ghazh’in, but not so much he could do without her insights. She cooperated, and opened up as he had never seen before.

  He began, “I have always thought of ler as just something like another race or culture of men; distant enough so that we could not crossbreed, of course, but like that, nothing more.”

  “No. It is not like that at all. We are different in more ways than you know. You see it as a cultural difference—and that it is, but there is much more underlying it. Your people have forgotten how it began, but we never do.”